As exciting as I’m sure my daily chronicles of travel have been, I’m going to take a day off from it to write about something else. This concept was something I discussed with a colleague last week at the conference in San Francisco and got to talking about again with another colleague this week in NYC. After chatting about it, we dug up this link and made some popcorn. The below video is a condensed version of a longer talk – the longer talk is good to, but doesn’t include the awesome whiteboard work demonstrated in the video below.
In watching this, as baffled as the results seem to be to a number of experts apparently, to me this seems akin to common sense. While money can be a decent incentive, it is not the great incentivizer. If it was, then rich executives would be the hardest working people in the world (while a handful of them might argue that they are, most of them are far from it). The interesting coincidence of this topic is that in the discussion, the company that is used as an example of a different way of thinking about incentivization is the very one that sponsored the conference I attended last week.
I am very tempted to send this video to the top executive team at my company and see how willing they may be to adopt some of the habits of it. I’m sure they will really love the full-length version as it seems to suggest that the sales commission model may be flawed as well (well the CEO and COO would like it, sales maybe less so). What is important to glean from this, though, isn’t that monetary incentives like bonuses don’t work (though apparently they don’t), but that what does work is to pay people what they need and deserve (so that money is not an issue) and motivate people through personal challenge and growth, a level of autonomy, and a sense of purpose.
I am also motivated to consider the lessons of this set of studies in the context of parenting. Obviously children aren’t motivated by money (at least not most kids) and material rewards and punishments have limited results. But perhaps more intrinsically valued rewards may be more motivating. If I have any luck with it, I’ll post an update on the matter.